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THOUGHTS 



ON 



Educational Psychology 



By William T. Harris, LL. D. 



BEING A REI'RIN r OF A SERIES OF PAPERS ORIGINALLY 

« 

PUBLISHED IN 

The ILLINOIS' School Journal. 



77iis pamphlet contains 

the first six papers of this, series. The remaining papers can be 

found in the ILLINOIS SCHOOL JOURNAL, beginning with October, tSS8. 

These back nutnbers supplied. Address GEO. P. BROWN, Editor, 

Bloomington, Illinois. 



Copyrighted by Illinois School Journal 
1889. 




THOUGHTS ON EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

I. 

I. What is meant by educational psychology? 

Psychology in general deals with mind and mental phenomena. 
In untechnical speech, soul, spirit, reason, intelligence, are used as 
synonyms of mind. Feeling, intellect, and will are said to be the 
different forms of activity of mind. Psychology investigates the 
forms of mental activity and their development or evolution. 

The word "development" suggests the phase of psychology 
which is of chief interest to education. Psychology as a general 
science is interested in all phases of mental processes and results. 
Education is interested especially in methods of mental develop- 
ment, and in the ideals of perfection that can be attained. Educa- 
tion attempts to change what is into what ought to be; it seeks to 
realize an ideal. It is rather an art than a science; but, of course, 
there is a science of education, that is to say, a science of the sub- 
ject-matter, the aims and the methods which belong to the art of 
education. This science of education has to draw from psychol- 
ogy its most important element — the theory of the method of devel- 
oping the mind. Its ideals are derived from the science of ethics, 
proximately at least. But ethics itself is founded on psychology. 
Psychology, in fact, is so fundamental that it conditions, in large 
measure, all the sciences based on the spiritual nature of man — 
ethics, theology, politics, sociology, aesthetics, and all forms of 
philosophy. 

Our question involves many considerations; for instance, the 
question of the relation of psychology to physiology. Physiology 
is the science of living bodies. Is mind only a function of a living 
body, or is it an individuality wholly spiritual? Certainly all must 
admit that there is interaction — that the condition of the body 
affects the manifestation of feeling, knowing, and willing, being 
favorable or unfavorable to such manifestation. On the other hand, 
the operations of feeling, knowing, and willing affect various bodily 
functions, retarding some and accelerating others. For how many 
thousand years has mankind known and prized the stimulants and 
narcotics for their influence on the mind ? Alcohol, tobacco, coffee, 
tea, opium, betel, hashish, — all have been sought for their psychical 
effects. Whether their influence is positive or negative, whether 
stimulants furnish so-called mental force, or whether they simply 
paralyze or benumb the body so as to relieve the mind of the dis- 



Thoughts on Educational Psychology. 3 

tracfon which a consciousness of its physical organs occasions 
(especially to acutely nervous persons)— this we see is a crucial 
question here. But it shall remain a question for the present. 
"Physiological psychology," as it chooses to call itself, has a great 
field for investigation. But even if the soul is only a bodily 
function, it is certain that it cannot make any progress without bor- 
rowing at every step the data derived from psychology by intro- 
spection. For feeling, knowing, and volition are not matters of exter- 
nal observation, but only of internal observation or introspection. 
Physiology, like other natural sciences, conducts its investiga- 
tions by the aid of external observation, mapping out provinces in 
the world, inventorying their contents, and finally classifying and 
systematizing facts by relating them to principles. By principles I 
mean energies acting according to laws: a cause that explains a phe- 
nomenon is a principle. But to external observation there is no psy- 
chical fact visible. We can behold things occupying space, and 
•events or actions filling time, but we cannot see a feeling with the 
•eye nor hear it with the ear; nor can we taste it, or smell it, or touch 
It. A feeling can be perceived only by consciousness. So too, the 
processes of knowing and willing cannot be perceived except by 
consciousness. The most that physiology can do is to investigate 
the relations of two orders of observation. It must compare the 
facts of physiology, the changes of the body, with the facts of men- 
tal action in the form of feelings, thoughts, and volitions. Intro- 
spection is, therefore, utterly indispensable to physiological psychol- 
ogy- 
Here we must note some of the characteristics of introspection. 



II. 

2. What is introspection? 

Introspection is internal observation— our consciousness of the 
activity of the mind itself. The subject who observes is the object 
observed. Consciousness is knowing of self. This seems to be the 
characteristic of mind and mental phenomena— there is always 
some degree of self-relation: there is self-feeling or self-knowledge. 
Even in mere life in the vegetative soul, there is self-relation— this 
we shall study as our chief object of interest in psychology. 

We shall note first the contrast between external and internal 
■observation. 



4 Thoughts on Educational Psychology. 

Outward observation is objective perception or sense-percep- 
tion. It perceives things and environments. Things are always 
relative to their environment. Things are therefore dependent 
beings. They stand in causal relation to other things and if moved 
are moved from without by external forces. 

Introspection or internal observation, on the other hand, per- 
ceives the activity of the mind, and this is self-activity and not a 
movement caused by external forces. Feelings, thoughts, volitions 
are phases of self-activity. This we shall consider more in detail. 
Let us note that a feeling, a thought, or a volition implies subject 
and object. Each is an activity and an activity of the self. Exter- 
nal perception does not perceive any self. It perceives only what 
is extended in time and space and what is consequently multiple, 
what is moved by something else and not self-moved. If it beholds 
living objects it does not behold the self that animates the body, 
but only the body that is organically formed by the self. But intro- 
spection beholds the self. 

This is a very important distinction between the two orders of 
observation, external and internal. The former can perceive only 
phenomena, the latter can perceive noumena. The former can per- 
ceive only what is relative, and dependent on something else; the 
latter can perceive what is independent and self-determined, a pri- 
mary cause and source of movement. To pass from the first order 
of observation which perceives external things, to the second order 
of observation which perceives self-activity, is to take a great step. 
(We must consider self-activity in our next section.) 

We are dimly conscious of our entire mental activity, but we 
do not (until we have acquired psychologic skill) distinguish and 
separately identify its several phases. It is the same in the outer 
world: we knovv many things in ordinary consciousness, but only in 
science do we unite the items of our knowledge systematically so as 
to make each assist in the explanation of all. Common knowledge 
lacks unity and system. In the inner world, too, there is common 
introspection, unsystematized and devoid of unity — the light of our 
ordinary consciousness. But there is a higher scientific introspec- 
tion which discovers both unity and system. 

The scientific view finds the general or universal. First it dis- 
covers classes; next, laws; then causal principles. Science invento- 
ries facts, identifying them as falling under classes. Then it goes 
back of the idea of class and regards the energy that produces a 
class of facts by continual action according to a fixed form. This 
fixed form of action it called law. It rises above the idea of law ta 



Thoughts on Educational Psychology. 5 

the idea of purpose or adaptation to end. That is to say it discov- 
ers evolution or progressive development. In the view of evolution 
there is a goal towards which relatively lower orders are progress- 
ing, and the facts, forces, and laws are seen as parts of a great 
world-process which explains all. At this point science rises into 
philosophy. Philosophy is science which investigates all facts and 
phenomena in view of a final or ultimate principle — the first prin- 
ciple of the universe. When science comes to study all objects in 
view of the principle of evolution it has trancended the stage of 
mind whose highest object is to discover classes; likewise the stage 
that makes law an ultimate. Besides efficient cause which makes 
or produces some new state or condition there is "final cause" or 
purpose — design or "end and aim." The theory of evolution takes 
into consideration this idea of the "end and aim" of changes in 
nature. It ranges or ranks all phenomena according to their devel- 
opment or realization of an ideal. Now it is evident that purpose, 
design, or "final cause" is an ideal that can have existence for a 
being (/. e. conscious existence) only in so far as it is a soul or 
mind. A living being like a plant which can grow but not feel, does 
not perceive or feel its ideal, and yet its ideal guides and directs the 
activity of its efficient cause or active force. The ideal is only 
^'law" to the plant. But in the lowest form of animal life there is a 
feeling of want — that is to say the want of an ideal different from 
its real. We can observe even the lowest animals moving in order 
to adjust themselves to the environment, or to appropriate the 
environment for food. As an external phenomenon we should 
never be able to explain such movements, because we cannot per- 
ceive ideals with our external senses. We interpret such move- 
ments through our own introspection. We can feel wants and be 
conscious of motives. We can therefore recognize in a being the 
existence of introspection in the form of feeling, or in some higher 
form, only because we exercise the activity of introspection our- 
selves. 

Strange as it may appear, therefore, we conduct even external 
observation by means of introspection. Natural science in adopt- 
ing the theory of evolution advances to the stage wherein it makes 
it its chief object to recognize development from a lower stage 
towards a higher — the progressive realization of an ideal. The 
ideal is unconscious in the inorganic world and in the plant world, 
but acts only as law or as vitality. In the animal world it is con- 
scious of this ideal, and feels it as appetite or represents it in the 
form of a mental image. 



6 Thoughts on Educational Psychology. 

The evolution theory recognizes introspection as existing in the 
objective world — it sees in nature a tendency to develop such beings 
as possess internality and energize to realize their ideals. It is 
curious to note that this movement in science begins by the utter 
repudiation of what is called teleology; /. e., it sets aside the old 
doctrine of design which looked for marks of external adaptation 
of nature to ulterior spiritual uses — such external design as one 
finds in a watch where the various parts are artificially adapted to 
produce what they never would have produced naturally. Such 
external teleology ignored the immanent teleology of nature. By 
rejecting the old mechanical teleology which makes nature a 
machine in the hand of God, evolution has come to see the teleology 
which God has breathed into nature — to see, in short, that nature Is 
through and through teleological. Nature is, in every particle of 
it, governed by ideals, which, however, are not perceived except by 
introspection. Matter is heavy, and falls, for example, only because 
it obeys an ideal — an ideal of which it is entirely unconscious, and 
yet which is manifested in it in the form of weight. Gravity is the 
manifestation of the unity of one body with another. The unity is 
ideal or potential, but its manifestation is real force, real attraction. 

This subject of introspection thus leads out to the end of the 
world and reappears underneath the method of modern natural 
science which studies all objects in their history — in their evolution. 
Strangely enough the scientists of the present day decry in psychol- 
ogy what they call the "introspective method." And just as in the 
case of the repudiation of teleology, they are bound to return to 
some other form of what they repudiate. Renounce teleology and 
you find nothing but teleology in everything. Renounce introspec- 
tion and you are to find introspection the fundamental moving prin- 
ciple of all nature. All things have their explanation in a blind 
attempt on the part of nature to look at itself. 

One more remark: A blind tendency in nature to develope 
some ideal implies as its logical condition a completely realized 
ideal in the absolute first principle in which nature is given its 
being. If nature is evolution — a process moving towards self-con- 
sciousness — it is no complete and independent process, but a means 
used by an absolute Personal Being — God — for the creation of liv- 
ing souls in His own image. 

I break off here, in order to commence a new topic which will 
lead us back again to the question of introspection. Indeed the 
most important phases of introspection will be found in our inven- 
tory of the three stages of thinking in a subsequent article. 



Thoughts on Educational Psychology. 



III. 

3. Self-activity. 

A. What is the great central fact to be kept in view in the study 
of the mind? To this question there is only one answer: — it is 
self-activity. But the answer is likely to be a sphinx riddle to the 
beginner. Who has not heard it often repeated that the end and 
aim of education is to arouse self-activity in the pupil? And yet 
who means anything by that word? The moment that one calls 
attention to its true implication he is met by the objection: It is 
impossible to conceive the origination of activity; it is impossible 
to frame a concept, of what is both subject and object at the same 
time; self-activity and self-consciousness are inconceivable. "The 
words exist, it is true, but the mind is unable to realize in thought 
what is signified by them." Herbert Spencer ("First Principles," 
page 65 of first edition) says of self-consciousness: "Clearly a true 
cognition of self-implies a state in which the knowing and known 
are one, in which the subject and object are identified; and this Mr. 
Mansell rightly holds to be the annihilation of both." 

Just the difficulty found in the conception of self-consciousness 
is found in that of self-activity. We cannot form a mental picture 
of self activity, nor of self-consciousness. We cannot picture an 
activity in which the origin is also the point of return. But this 
does not surprise us so much when we learn that we cannot form a 
mental picture of any activity of any kind whatever. We cannot 
picture even a movement in space although we may picture the two 
places between which the motion occurs. So, too, becoming and 
change cannot be pictured in the mind, although we may picture 
the states of being before and after the transition. We may picture 
an object as here or there, but not as moving. The ancient skep- 
tics expressed this fact by denying motion altogether. "A thing," 
said they, "cannot move where it is, because it is there already, 
and of course it cannot move where it is not; hence it cannot move 
at all." 

The unwary listener who supposes that he is thinking the ele- 
ments of the problem when he merely exercises his imagination, 
finds himself drawn into a logical conclusion that contradicts all 
his experience. To deny motion, in fact, makes experience impos- 
sible. Take all motion out of the world and there could be no 
experience; for experience involves motion in the subject that per- 
ceives, or in the object perceived, or in both. And yet we cannot 



8 Thoughts on Educational Psychology. 

form a mental picture of motion or change. We picture different 
states or conditions of an object that is undergoing change; and 
different positions occupied by a moving thing. But the element of 
change and motion we do not picture. 

Hence it is not surprising that we cannot form for ourselves a 
mental picture of self-activity, since we are unable to picture in our 
minds any sort of activity, movement, or change. And yet the 
thought of motion, change, and activity, is necessary to explain the 
world of experience, — nay, even to perceive or observe it. So, too, 
the thought of self-activity is necessary in order to explain motion, 
change, and activity. 

To make this clear, consider the following: {a) That which 
moves, moves either because it is impelled to move by another, or 
because it impels itself to move, {b) In the latter case, that of self- 
impulsion, we have self-activity at once, (r) In the former case, 
that of impulsion through another, we have self-activity implied as 
origin of the motion. Either the one which moves it is directly 
self-active, or else it receives and transmits the energy causing 
motion (without originating it), {d) Were there no originating 
source of movement it is obvious that there could be no motion to 
transmit. Suppose, for once, that all things received and trans- 
mitted and yet none originated energy. Then all phenomena of 
movement would be derived, but from no source; all would be 
effects, but effected by no cause. The chain of transmitting links 
may be infinite in extent, but it is only an infinite effect without a 
cause. Here we contradict ourselves. If there is no self-active 
cause from which the energy proceeds, and from which it is received 
by the infinite transmitting series, then that series does not derive 
its energy, but originates it and is self-active. 

Hence, self-activity must be either within the series or outside 
it, and in any case self-activity is the essential idea pre-supposed as 
the logical condition of any thought of motion whatever. 

B. I have been obliged to discuss at length this notion of self- 
activity in order to prepare the road for genuine psychological ob- 
servation. If the reader denies the existance of self-activity he is 
unprepared to see or observe it, and psychology does not and can- 
not exist for him so long as he holds consistently to his denial. He 
may make some progress in the study of physics, perhaps, but he 
cannot learn even the physiology of plants or animals without the 
idea of self-activity. He may study anatomy as the structure of 
dead bodies, but he cannot study life and organism without recog- 
nizing self activity in one of its three forms — assimilation, sensation, 



T/iouj^hts on Educational Psychology. g 

and thought. Of course psychology is impossible to him when he 
cannot even enter physiology. 

Let us dismiss here the reader who can neither see the logical 
necessity of admitting self-activity as the basis of all motion, and 
who, on the other hand, will not admit practically the existence of 
self-active beings side by side with beings that derive all of their 
changes from outside. Dismissing those skeptics who deny the 
possibility of psychology of any kind (physiological psychology or 
otherwise), let us address ourselves to willing students of the phe- 
nomena of life, sensation, locomotion, and thought, and all phases 
of self-activity. 

What phenomena are attributed to self-activity? In the first 
place we recognize it in plants. All human observation, whether 
of civilized or of savage peoples, takes note of self-activity in the 
phenomena of vegetation. 

The plant grows, put? out new buds, leaves, branches, blos- 
soms, fruit; adds layers to its thickness, extends its roots. It does, 
this by its own activity, and its growth is not the effect of some out- 
side being, although outside conditions must be favorable or else 
the energy of the plant is not able to overcome the obstacle. 

^ The plant must grow by adding to itself matter that it takes up 
from its environment — water, salts, carbon, etc. Notice that the 
plant-energy attacks its surroundings of air, moisture, and earth, 
and appropriates to itself its environment, after transforming it. 
One may admit that the environment acts on the plant, but he must 
contend for the essential fact that the plant reacts on its environ- 
ment, originating motion itself, and meeting and modifying external 
influences. The plant builds its structure according to an ideal 
model; not a conscious model, of course. " Its shape and size, its 
roots and branches, its leaves and flowers, and fruit resemble the 
ideal (model or type) of its kind or species, and not the ideal of 
some other species. The self-activity of the plant is manifested in 
action upon its environment, which results in building up its 
own individuality. It not only acts, but acts for itself; if is self- 
related. 

Again, notice that the plant acts destructively on other things, 
and strips off the individuality that transforms their substance into 
its own tissue, making it into vegetable cells. 

The self-acti\ity of the ])lant is then a formative power that 
can conquer other forms and impose its own form upon them. 

In the next place, consider the kind of energy that we call the 
self-activity in animals. The individual animal is also a formative 



lo Thoughts on Educational Psychology. 

energy, destroying other forms, eating up plants, for example, and 
consuming the oxygen of the air, and making over the matter into 
animal cells. 

But the animal shows self-activity in other ways. It not only 
appropriates and assimilates, but it moves its limbs and feels. In 
the plant there is movement of circulation and growth, and this is 
also found in the animal. But locomotion is a new feature of self- 
activity, It enables the animal to change his environment. The 
animal can use some part of itself as an instrument for providing 
food, or as a lever by which to move its whole body. 

Self-activity is manifested in locomotion, and especially in its 
conformity to design or purpose. The animal moves in order to real- 
ize a purpose. With purpose or design, we have reached internality. 

Purpose or design implies a distinction between what is and 
what is not. The lowest and blindest feeling that exists deals with 
this discrimination. Pleasure and pain, comfort and discomfort, 
appetite and aversion, all imply discrimination between one's or- 
ganism and the environment, as well as between the organism as it 
is, and the organism as it should be. There is in all feeling a dis- 
crimination of limit and a passing beyond limit This transcend- 
ing of the limit to the organism by the self-activity constitutes sen- 
sibility. However obscure this may appear to the novice, it will 
grow clear and clearer upon further study. The following remarks 
may summarize what will be given in fuller treatment hereafter. 

Feeling is an activity; it is a self-activity; it is like assimilation 
or digestion, a reaction against an environment. The environment 
negates or limits the organism; feeling perceives the limitation, or 
discriminates itself as organism from its not-self as environment. 
Feeling, therefore, transcends its organism, and unites two factors — 
organic self and environment. The self moves in order to relieve 
itself of the pain or discomfort attending this negative action of the 
environment. Hunger and cold, all varieties of appetite, and desire, 
have this elemental discrimination between organism and environ- 
ment, and a further discrimination between the being of the self 
and the non-being of the self, so that something not yet existent 
(some ideal state) is discriminated. This discrimination of the 
ideal is the essential element in desire and sensation, as well as in 
all higher forms of self-activity, say of thought and will. 

It is important to recognize the existence of discrimination in 
this lowest stage of blind feeling — the most rudimentary animal 
soul. Feeling, in the act of discriminating between the existing self 
and its possible self, is constructive ideally, for it repeats to itself 



Thoughts on Educational Psychology. ii 

its- limitation. The limit to its organism exists, and it is in inter- 
action with its environment. But the self-activity in this higher 
phase of feeling (higher than the vegetative function of digestion) 
constructs ideally the limit of the organism and changes the limit 
for other possible limits, comparing it therewith. This comparison 
of one limit with other possible ones is the element of discrimination 
in feeling. 

Sensation is an ideal reproduction of the actual limit to the 
organism. It involves also the simultaneous production of other 
possible limitations, and hence contains a reference to itself, a feel- 
ing of self in its total capacity. On a background, so to speak, of 
the general possibility of feeling is marked off this particular limit 
which reproduces or represents the existent. The contrast between 
it and the general potentiality of feeling is the birth of purpose or 
design, and (glancing upward) of all the ideals that arise in the 
human soul, moral, aesthetic, and religious. 

Self-activity as assimilation or digestion (vegetative soul), as 
feeling and locomotion (animal soul), and as thinking (human soul) 
is to be studied as the fundamental unity of psychology and phy- 
siology. 

»It is not in itself an object of external observation, although 
external observation offers us phenomena that we explain by assum- 
ing self-activity as the individuality which causes them. Self-activ- 
ity itself we perceive in ourselves by introspection. When we look 
within we become aware of free energy which acts as subject and 
object under the forms of feeling, thought, and volition. Becoming 
acquainted with the characteristic of these activities within our- 
selves, we learn to recognize their manifestations in the external 
world. 

In our next, we shall discuss self-activity as thought, and dis- 
criminate its three essential stages. 



4. The three stages of thought. 

The most important discovery I have ever made for myself in 
the world of thought is this one of the three ascending steps or 
grades which any one may take with due study and meditation. 

I think that all who have seen the third stage of thinking will 
echo my opinion of its importance. It makes an epoch in ones 
history. 



1 J Thou,i^^h/s on Educational Psychology. 

I think that I first heard of these three stages in my twentieth 
year. I certainly couhl not define them satisfactorily until many 
years afterwards, though I studied Coleridge ("Aids to Reflection" 
and "The Friend") and many other writers, who named the dis- 
tinctions and described them more or less vaguely. I always sought 
for some examples or specimens of the different grades of knowl- 
edge in order that 1 might learn to discriminate them for myself. 
But my efforts were long in vain. 

The "Reason" was described in these writings as something 
elevated above the "Understanding;" "Sense-perception" named 
the the lowest stage of intellect; "Understanding," the second from 
below; "Reason" the highest. I read that reason furnished princi- 
ples, while the understanding merely perceived relations between 
objects. Again, I read that the reason drew logical inferences and 
used the syllogism, while the understanding performed the function 
of the logical judgment, subsuming objects under general predicates. 

Here was no useful classification, at least for me. It did not 
throw light on any subject. All people seemed to employ judg- 
ments and syllogisms whether in shallow thinking or in deep think- 
ing. But I sought for a definition of the deeper grade of thinking 
that would discriminate it from the shallower grade. Such a defini- 
tion I believe that I found eventually; and subsequently I recognized 
many descriptions of it in Plato. 

I will endeavor to set forth here, briefly, the prominent features 
of the three grades of thought, hoping that those who have before 
noted them will be able to recognize the essential characteristics in 
my description. 

(a) The lowest stage of thinking supposes that its objects are 
all independent one of another. Each thing is self-existent, and a 
"solid reality." To be sure it thinks relations between things, but 
it places no special value on relations. Things exist apart from 
relations and relations are for the most part the arbitrary product of 
thought or reflection. Things, it is true, are composite and devis- 
ible into smaller things, and smaller things are divisible again. All 
things are composed of smallest things or atoms. 

This lowest stage of thinking, it appears, explains all by the two 
categories of "thing" and "composition." All differences accord- 
ingly arise through combination or composition. But since differ- 
ences include all that needs explanation, it follows that this stage 
of thinking deceives itself in supposing that t/n'ngs are the essential 
elements in its view of the world and that relations are the unes- 
sential. 



Thoughts on Educational Psychology. 13 

A little development of the power of thought produces for us 
the consciousness that some relations, at least, are the essential ele- 
ments of our experience. 

{b) That first stage of thinking, nearest allied to sense-percep- 
tion, supposes that things are the essential elements of all being. 
The second stage which we may call the unJerstandingknows better 
what is essential; it regards relations as essential. By relations, it 
does not mean arbitrary comparisons or the result of idle reflections. 
It has made the discovery of truly essential relations. It deals with 
the category of relativity, in short, and goes so far as to affirm that 
if a grain of sand were to be destroyed, all beings in space would be 
changed more or less. Each thing is relative to every other, and 
there is reciprocal or mutual dependence. 

Isaac Newton's thought of universal gravitation deserves all the 
fame it has got, because it sets up in modern thinking this category 
of relativity, and all thinking in our day is being gradually trained 
into its use by the application constantly made of it. Isaac Newton 
is a perpetual schoolmaster to the race. 

Herbert Spencer owes his reputation to his faithful adherence to 
the thought of relativity in his expositions. Our knowledge is all 
relative, says he (with the exception of that very important knowl- 
edge — the knowledge of the principle of relativity itself— we add, 
sotto voce), and things, too, are all relative, he continues. Essential 
relativity means dependence. A is dependent on B so that the being 
of B is also the being of A. Such is the law of relativity. More- 
over it refuses to think an ultimate principle as origin of all. It 
says: A depends on B; B, again, on C; ConD; and so on, in infinite 
progression. 

Relativity, as a supreme principle, is pantheistic. It makes all 
being dependent on something beyond- it. Hence it denies ultimate 
individuality. All individuality is a transient result of some under- 
lying abstract principle, a "persistent force," for example. 'Individ- 
ual things are the transient products (static equilibria) of forces. 
Forces again are modes of manifestaiion of some persistent energy 
into which they all vanish. 

This second stage of thinking attains its most perfect form in 
the doctrine of the correlation of forces,- and is the ancient scepti- 
cism of Pyrrho, and Sextus Empiricus. It underlies, too, the 
Buddhist religion and all pantheistic theories of the world. Noth- 
ing is so common among men of science in our day as theories 
based on absolute relativity. It is often set up by those who 
still hold the non-relational theory of the lower plane of thought, 



14 Thoughts on Edticational PsycJwJogy. ^ 

tliough if held with logical strictness it is incompatible with the 
preceding stage. 

The first stage explains by the category of things, or independ- 
ent non-relational beings, while the second stage explains by the 
category of force or essential relation. Take notice that force 
does not need a nucleus of things as a basis of efficacy; for 
things are themselves only systems of forces held in equilibria by 
force. 

(yc) Relativity presupposes self-relation. Self-relation is the 
category of the reason just as relativity is the category of the under- 
standing; or non-relativity the category of sense-perception. De- 
pendence implies transference of energy — else how could energy be 
borrowed? That which originates energy is independent being. 
Reflection discovers relativity or dependence, and hence, unites 
beings into systems. Deepest reflection discovers total systems 
and the self-determining principles which originate systems of 
dependent being. The reason looks for complete, independent, 
or total beings. Hence the reason finds the self-active or its results 
everywhere. 

Sense-perception is atheistic; — it finds each thing sufficient for 
itself, that is to say, self-existent. The understanding is pantheistic; 
it finds everything finite and relative and dependent on an absolute 
that transcends all qualities and attributes — "un unknown and un- 
knowable" "persistent force," which is the negative of all particular 
forces. The reason is theistic because it finds self-activity or self- 
determination, and identifies therewith mind. Mind \?, self-activity 
in a perfect form, while iife is the same in a less developed stage. 
Kvery whole is an independent being and hence self-determined or 
self-acdve. If not self-determined it has no determinations (qual- 
ities, marks, or attributes) and is pure nothing; or, having determina- 
tions, it must originate them itself or else receive them from outside 
itself. But in case it receives its determination from outside it is a 
dependent being. Reason sees this disjunctive syllogism. 

While Buddhism and Brahminism are religions of the under- 
standing, Christianity is essentially a religion of the reason and 
furnishes a sort of universal education for the mind in habits of 
thinking according to reason. It teaches by authority the view of- 
the-world that reason thinks. 

(c/) It has appeared that each of the three stages of thinking is 
a view-of-the-world, and thatitisnota theory of things worn for 
ornament — so to speak — or only on holidays — but a silent pre-sup- 
position that tinges all one's thinking. 



Thoughts on Educational Psychology. 15 

. A person may wear his religion on Sabbath-days and put it off 
on week days, possibly. But his view-of-the-world shows itself in 
all that he does. 

All things take on a different appearance when viewed by the 
light of the reason. For reason is insight; it sees all things in God 
as Malebranche expressed it. For it looks at each thing to discover 
in it the purpose of the whole universe. To see the whole in the 
part is justly esteemed characteristic of divine intelligence. 

The oft-asserted ability of great men of science — that of Cuvier 
to see the whole animal in a single bone of its skeleton — that of Lyell 
to read the history of the glacial period in a pebble — that of Agas- 
siz to recognize the whole fish by one of its scales — that of Asa Gray 
to see all botany in a single plant; — these are indications of the arri- 
val at the third stage of knowing on the part of scientific men within 
their departments. Gcethe's " Homunculus" in the second part of 
Faust, symbolizes this power of insight which within a limited sphere 
(its bottle!) is able to recognize the whole in each fragment. 

The spirit or specialization in our time aims to exhaust one by 
one the provinces of investigation with a view to acquire this power 
to see totalities. Plato described this third stage of thinking as a 
po\\er of knowing-by-wholes (totalities). 

Learn to comprehend each thing in its entire history. This is 
the maxim of science guided by the reason. Always bear in mind 
that self-activity is the ultimate reality — all dependent being is a 
fragment, the totality is self-active. The things of the world all 
have their explanation in the manifestation of self-activity in its 
development. All is for the development of individuality and ulti- 
mate free union of souls in the kingdom of God. 

To sum up: the lowest thinking activity inventories things but 
neglects relations; the middle stage of thinking inventories relations, 
forces, and processes, and sees things in their essences, but neglects 
self-relation or totality; the highest stage of thinking knows that all 
independent being has the form of life or mind, and that the abso- 
lute is a person, and it studies all things to discern traces of the 
creative energy which is the form of the totality. 

The theory of evolution rightly comprehended as the move- 
ment of all things in time and space towards the development of 
individuality — that is to say, towards a more perfect manifestation 
or reflection of the Creator, who is above time and space — this 
theory is (properly understood) the theory of the reason. The 
theory of gravitation, as a world- view, on the other hand, is that of 
the understanding. 



1 6 T/ioir^/iis on Educational PsycJiology. 

V. 

5. A Conception is not a Mental Picture. 

Perceptions relate to individual objects; conceptions relate to 
general classes or to abstractions — such is the current doctrine of 
psychology. As the mental acts of perceiving and conceiving form 
the most important topics of psychology we must make several 
studies upon them. I think that it is profitable to discuss the differ- 
ences between mental images or pictures and conceptions before 
entering upon the question of the origin of general notions. The 
processes of abstraction and classification may be considered here- 
after. Let us now take up the inquiry: What constitutes a general 
notion or conception? To this we may reply that it is not a mental 
image, but a definition. The general notion tree should include all 
trees of whatever description, and it is expressed by a definition. 
But no sooner do I attempt to conceive the notion tree than I form 
a mental image. The image, however, is not general enough to suit 
the notion. I imagine a particular specimen of a tree, — an oak, for 
example. If I imagine it vividly, it is an individual just as much as 
the oak that I may see before me in the forest. My conception of 
tree in general recognizes the inadequacy of the image, and dis- 
misses it or permits it to be replaced by another image which ])re- 
sents a different specimen. Perhaps we have never noticed this 
relation of images to the conception. We are conscious of only a 
few phases of our mental activity until we have cultivated our 
powers of introspection. Notice carefully the art of realizing any 
general conception (or ''concept," if one wishes technically to dis- 
tinguish the product from the process itself). We shall discover 
that our definition is a sort of rule for the formation of images, 
rather than an image. What conception do we form of bird? We 
think of a flying animal — of feathers, wings, bills, claws, and various 
appurtenances which we unite in the idea of bird. We call up 
images and dismiss them as we go over the elements of our defini- 
tion, for we recognize the images to be too special or particular to 
correspond to the conception. In the rudest and least developed 
intellects, whether of savages or children, the same process is re- 
peated. Is this a bird? Yes; it has a bill, claws, feathers, wings, etc. 
But it does not have either of these in general. Its bill is a particular 
specimen of bill, having one of the many shapes, or colors, or mag- 
nitudes possible to a bill. So, too, of its feathers, wings, claws, etc. 
The image of our bird was not of a bird in general, but of a hawk, 
or duck, a hen, or pigeon, or of some other species of birds. Nor 



Thoughts on Educational Psychology. 17 

was the image that of a hawk, or a duck, etc., /// general, but of a 
particular variety; and not even of a variety in general, but finally 
of a posssble or remembered individual specimen of a variety. So, 
too, the features of the bird are only individual specimens or exam- 
ples that fall under the general conceptions of claws, feathers, bills, 
wings, etc. 

The definition which we have formed for ourselves serves as a 
rule by which we form an image that will illustrate it. This differ- 
ence between the conception and the specimen is known to the child 
and the savage, though it is not consciously reflected upon. 

Take up a different class of conceptions. Take the abstractions 
of color, taste, smell, sound, or touch; for example — redness, sour- 
ness, fragrance, loudness, hardness, etc. Our conception includes 
infinite degrees of possible intensity, while our image or recalled 
experience is of some definite degree and does not correspond to 
the general notion. ' 

We have considered objects and classes of objects that admit 
of images as illustrations. These images, if vague, seem to approx- 
imate conceptions; if vivid, to depart from them. But no image can 
be so vague as to correspond to any conception. Let us take more 
gen«ral notions, such as force, matter, quality, being. For force, 
image, if one can, some action of gravitation or of heat. If some 
image or experience can be called up it is felt to be a special example 
that covers only a very small part of the province of force in gen- 
eral. But an image, strictly considered, cannot be made of force at 
all nor of any special example of force. We can image some 
object that is acted upon by force — we can image it before it is 
acted upon and after it is acted upon. That is to say, we can image 
the results of the force, but not the force itself. We can think of 
force, but not image it. 

If we conceive existence, and image some existent thing; if 
we conceive quantity in general and image a series of things that 
can be numbered, or an extension or degree that may be measured; 
if we conceive relation in general and try to illustrate it by imaging 
particular objects between which there is a relation — in all these 
and similar cases we can hardly help being conscious of the vast 
differences between the image and the conception. In realizing the 
conception of relation, as in that of force or energy, we do not 
image even an examplq or specimen of a relation or force, but 
we image only the conditions or termini of a specimen relation; but 
the relation itself must be thought, just as any force must be thought, 
but cannot be imaged. We can think relations but not image them. 



^ 



1 8 Thoughts on Educational Psychology. 

Just here we notice that we have a lurking conviction that these 
general ideas or conceptions are not so valid and true to reality as 
our images are or as our immediate perceptions are. Conceptions 
we should think, are vague and faint impressions of sensation. 
"Ideas are the faint images of sense-impressions" said Hume. 

Nominalism says that there is nothing in reality corresponding 
to our general conceptions, and that such conceptions are mere 
devices of ours for convenience in knowing and reasoning. If so, 
our images are truer than our conceptions. Herbert Spencer 
says (in his "First Principles") that our conceptions are mere 
symbols of objects too great or too multitudinous to be mentally 
represented. 

If the views of Hume and Herbert Spencer are true in regard 
to our general notions, psychology would have a very different les- 
son in it — very different from that which we propose to find. To us 
the images are far less true than our conceptions. The images 
stand for fleeting or evanescent forms while the conceptions state 
the eternal and abiding laws, the causal energies that constitute the 
essence of all phenomena. 

When we are contemplating the world as a congeries of things 
(recall the "lowest stage of thinking" described in our previous 
article) we seem to be convinced that all true reality has the form 
of things. But when we begin to reflect on what our experience 
teaches, we see that all things are the results of forces, and that they 
(the things) are in a process of change into other things. The un- 
derlying reality then is force, and even Herbert Spencer assures 
us that the ultimate reality is a persistent force — persistent under 
all the special forces. These forces form and transform things. 
Now force or energy is more real than the fleeting things in 
which it manifests itself, and the persistent force is more substan- 
tial still. 

Here we find ourselves arrived at another conviction than nom- 
inalism. We see that general conceptions correspond more nearly 
to the deeper realities (the formative and destructive forces) which 
manifest themselves in the process of the world. In fact psychol- 
ogy ought to recognize that the mental process of forming general 
conceptions is the process of discovering the real process in which 
things are found by our experience. We find the history of things 
— we trace them from one shape to another, and we name the pro- 
cess and define it. Hence arise our general notions. The oak and 
the acorn are two things to perception. But experience discovers 
tliat there is an individual energy which manifests itself as acorn, 



Thoughts on Educational Psychology. 19 

and then as sapling, and again as oak bearing a crop of acorns.. 
From acorn to acorn again there is a process. Our word oak sig- 
nifies this general conception which corresponds to the deeper real- 
ity of energy which reveals itself in the whole process. 

This leads us from the question of mental images to the ques- 
tion of the reality vv^hich we learn to know through experience. We 
learn to estimate at their proper value things and dead results, and 
to look beyond them to the energies that cause them to be and to 
change. In the changes we see revealed the generic causes and the 
laws or forms of manifestation. We learn in the order of the growth 
of an oak or of a human being what is the energy that is there in- 
carnated and what is the law of the inner essential form. 

In oux- next chapter we shall take up examples of ideas or con- 
ceptions that cannot be generalized from experience, and yet which 
are ideas of such importance as to makeexperience impossible with- 
out them. We refer to the ideas of Space, Time, and Causality. 



VI. 

% 6. Time, Space, and Causality — Three Ideas that make Exper- 
ience possible. 

A conception is not a mental picture but a sort of rule or defi- 
nition for the formation of mental pictures. The mental pictures 
thus formed are only illustrations. The mental picture called 
up by the word oak is an illustration but does not exhaust the 
idea of oak. The idea of oak includes an infinite number of 
possible examples, illustrations, or specimens, all differing one from 
another. 

Inasmuch as all particular specimens of the oak have grown 
to be what they are (or what they were) by the action of an oak- 
producing energy, the idea or conscious conception that we form of 
oak corresponds not to the individual but to the energy which pro- 
duces the individual. Moreover, as the energy that brings the 
individual example of an oak into being — causing it to sprout and 
become a sapling, grow to maturity and bear its crop of acorns, 
continually appropriating from its environment air, moisture, salts, 
and other material that it needs, and converting them into vegetable 
cells — this energy is a more potent reality than its effect, the indi- 
vidual oak. It is the generic process, in fact, and does not stop 
with one oak, nor a forest of oaks. Our general idea of oaks or- 



2 Tlioughts on Educational Psychology. 

responds to this generic energy, and hence has a deeper reality cor- 
responding to it than the mere individual oak or oaks are that we 
see by the aid of our senses. Sense-perception does not, in fact, 
amount to much until it is aided by the formation of concepts or 
general ideas. 

Previous to the formation of general ideas, sense-perception is 
merely the ceaseless flow of individual impressions without observed 
connection with one another. In fact we do not perceive at all, 
strictly speaking, until we bring general ideas to the aid of our 
sense-impressions. For we do not perceive things except by com- 
bining our different sense-impressions — that is to say, by uniting them 
by means of the ideas of Time, Space, and Causality. 

These three ideas are not derived from experience — in other 
words, -they are not externally perceived as objects, or learned by 
contact with them as individual examples. We know that this is so 
by considering their nature, and especially by noting that they are 
necessary as conditions for each and every act of experience. We 
do not mean, of course, that we must be conscious of these ideas of 
time, space, and causality before any act of experience; nor would 
we deny that we became conscious of those ideas by analyzing 
-experience — what we deny is that they were furnished by sense- 
impressions; what we affirm is that they were furnished by the mind 
in its unconscious act of appropriating the sense-impressions and 
converting them into perception. The mind's self-activity is the 
sjource of such ideas. 

We find these ideas in experience, but as furnished by the self- 
activity of the mind itself, and not as derived from sense-impres- 
sions. We may each and all convince ourselves of the impossibility 
of deriving these ideas from sense-impressions by giving attention 
to the peculiar nature of these ideas. We shall see, in fact, that 
no act of experience can be completed without these ideas. Im- 
manuel Kant called them "forms of the mind" — they may be 
said to belong to the constitution of the mind itself because it 
uses these ideas in the first act of experience, and in all acts of 
experience. 

Why could not these ideas be furnished by experience like ideas 
of trees and animals, of earth and sky? The answer is: Because the 
ideas of time and space involve infinitude, and the idea of causality 
involves absoluteness; and neither of these ideas could by any pos- 
sibility be received through the senses. And it is not correct to say 
that we derive even ideas of trees and animals, earth and sky, from 
sense-impressions, because sense-impressions cannnot become ideas 



Thoughts on Educational Psychology. 21 

until they are brought under the form of time, space, and causality. 
Before this they are merely sensations; after this they are ideas of 
possible or real objects existing in the world. 

Let the psychologist who believes that all ideas are derived 
from sense-impressions explain how we could receive by such means 
the idea of what is infinite and absolute. Is not any sense-percep- 
tion limited to what is here and now? How can we perceive by the 
senses what is everywhere and eternal? 

The materialists will answer, perhaps: "We cannot, it is true, 
perceive what is infinite and eternal by means of the senses; nor 
can we conceive or think such ideas by any means whatever. In 
fact, we do not have such ideas. Time and space and causality do 
not imply conceptions of infinitude or absoluteness. All supposed 
conceptions of the infinite and absolute are merely negative ideas, 
which express our incapacity to conceive the infinite rather than 
our positive comprehension of it." 

The issue being fairly presented we may test the matter for our- 
selves. Do we think space to be infinite, or simply as indefinite? 
Do we not think space as having a nature that it can only be lim- 
ited by itself? In other words would not any limited space or 
spaces imply space beyond them and thus be continued vz.\.\\er than 
limited? Let any one try this thought and see if he does not find 
it necessary to think space as infinite, for the very reason that all 
spatial limitation implies space beyond the limit. Space as such 
cannot be limited— the limitation must belong always to that which 
is within space. An attempt to conceive space itself as limited 
results in thinking the limited space as within a larger space. Space 
is of such a nature that it can only be thought as self-continuous, 
for its very limitations continue it. A limited portion of space is 
bounded only by another space. The limited portion of space is 
continuous with its environment of space. 

This is a positive idea and not a negative one. The idea would 
be a negative idea if our thinking of it could not transcend the limit 
— that is to say if we could not think space beyond the limit. But 
as our thought of space is not thus conditioned (we are, in fact, 
obliged to think a continuous space under all spatial limita- 
tions) space is a positive or affirmative idea. We see that the mind 
thinks a positive infinite space under any idea of a thing extended 
in space. 

Let us state this in another way: We perceive or think things 
as having environments — each thing as being related to something 
else or to other things surrounding it. This is the thought of rela- 



2 2 Thoughts on Educational Psychology. 

tivity. But we think both things and environments as contained in 
pure space — and pure space is not limited or finite, because all lim- 
itation implies space beyond. 

The difficulty in this psychological question arises through a 
confusion of imagination with conception or thinking. While we 
conceive infinite space positively, and are unable to think space 
otherwise than infinite or self-continued — yet, on the other hand, 
we cannot image, or envisage, or form a mental picture of infinite 
space. This inability to imagine infinite space has been supposed 
by Sir William Hamilton (see his Lectures on Metaphysics, page 
527 of the American edition) to contradict our thought of infinite 
space. , His doctrine was adopted by Mansell and Lewes, and also 
by Herbert Spencer, who made it the foundation thought of his 
•"L'nknowable" (First Principles, Part L, Chap. i). 

Now, a little reflection (and introspection) will convince us that 
this incapacity of imagination to picture infinite space is not a proof 
that we cannot conceive or think that idea, but the contrary: Our 
incapacity to image infinite space is another proof of the infini- 
tude of space! 

When we form a mental picture of space, why do we know that 
that picture does not represent all space? Simply because we are 
conscious that our thought of the mental picture finds boundaries 
to that picture, and that these boundaries imply space beyond them; 
hence the limited picture (and all images and pictures must be lim- 
ited) includes a portion of space, but not all of space. Thus it is 
our thought of space as infinite, or self-continued, that makes us 
conscious of the inadequacy of the mental picture. If we could 
form a mental picture of all space, then it would follow of necessity 
that the whole of space is finite. In that case imagination would 
contradict thinking or conceiving. As it is, however, imagination 
confirms conception. Thinking says that space is infinite because 
it is of such a nature that all limitations posit space beyond them 
and thus only continue space instead of bound it. Imagination 
tries to picture space as a limited whole, but finds it impossible be- 
cause all its limitations fall within space and do not include space 
as a bounded whole. Thus both mental operations agree. The one 
is a negative confirmation of the other. Thinking reason sees pos- 
itively that space is infinite, while imagination sees that it cannot 
be imaged as finite. 

Time is also infinite. Any beginning presupposes a time pre- 
vious to it. Posit a beginning to time itself and we merely posit a 
time previous to time itself. Time can be limited by time only. 



Thoughts on Educational Psychology. 23 

The now is limited by time past and by time future; no, it is not 
correct to say that it is limited, for it is contmued by them. Time 
did not beein; nor will it end. 

But one cannot perceive an event without thinking it under the 
idea of time. No sensation that man may have had could be con- 
strued as a change or event happening in the world except by the 
idea of time. But it is impossible to derive the .dea of time such 
as we have it from sense-impressions, for any one, or any series of 
such impressions could not furnish an infinite time nor the idea of 

a necessary condition. . • ^ „, yx,^ 

Nor could the experience of any limited extension give us the 

idea of infinite space, or of the necessity ot space as a condition of 

that experience. . .^ , , 

To the reader who begins to think that this decussion 1. lead- 
into metaphysics as well as psychology, I would make this sugges- 
tion: Undoubtedly psychology does underlie the question of meta- 
physics. It relates to the theory of knowledge in its most genera 
Lm, and concerns, too, all concrete theories of ^^^ -orld as wel 
as the abstract questions of knowledge. In fact the attitude of 
modern science against P^ilosophy-the attitude oposm^^^^^^ 
against metaphysics-the attitude of mysticism and "theosophy 
against Christianity-in short, all agnosticism and pantheism 
Inches out at the point treat in this chapter. Most of it start 
professedly from Sir William Hamilton's supposed proof that the 
idea of the infinite is merely a negative idea-an incapacity instead 
of a real insight. From the psychological doctrine of the negativity 
of our ideas of the infinite and absolute (first apphed by Hanv 
ilton in his famous critique of Cousin) it is easy to establish the 
world-view of pantheism and to deny the doctrine of the person- 

''''^Who^wm say that psychology is not important for the teacher? 
Upon it 'depends the spirit of his instruction whether he gives a 
pantheistical or a theistical implication to the science and htera ure 
that he teaches. Psychology, as a mere classification of so-called 
faculties, or as a mechanical theory of sense-perception, conception 
imagination, will, and emotions, is undoubtedly of little worth, but 
as revealing to us the foundations of ultimate principles in our view 
of the world it is of decidedly great importance! 

It is true that the psychology offered to teachers is a mere class- 
ification of the activities of the mind. But in order that psychol- 
ogy shall be more than a classification, namely, an investigation o 
the essential forms of mind itself, it is exceedingly important that 



24 Thoughts on Educational Psychology. 

its ideas shall be studied before they are classified. Without such 
study it is easy to pass off a spurious theory of ideas — a theory, for 
example, that all ideas are derived from sense-impressions. On 
such a theory agnosticism may sit securely and deny God, Freedom, 
and Immortality. 

In our next we shall investigate the idea of causality and its 
absoluteness. 



